Conspircaies

you? This town has had more than its share of trouble, especially those poor people, so leave them alone. Please.'

'Actually, I'm a geneticist,' Jack said. 'If I publish anything it'll be in a scientific journal. Do you remember anything about the incidents?'

'I remember a lot of panic around the time those poor children were born, especially in all the other pregnant mothers in town, all terrified that their babies might end up the same way. We didn't have all the tests then that we have now, so there were a lot of very frightened families. It was an awful time, just awful. A research team from one of the medical centers came through and did a thorough investigation for the State Department of Health. They didn't find anything, neither will you.'

Jack held out his hand for the cartridge. 'You're probably right, but I'll never know until I look, will I.'

'Suit yourself,' she said, shoving the cartridge into his palm. 'But you're wasting your time.'

Turned out she was right.

Jack situated himself before a viewer and began paging through the back files. The Express was a small town paper, devoted almost exclusively to local issues. Took Jack no time to scan through two months' worth.

February 1968 was an uneventful month, but March turned out to be a whole different story—not a good time at all for the Village of Monroe: violent storms, protest marchers, and a man named Jim Stevens dying an ugly accidental death outside some place known as 'the Hanley mansion.' And then a few days later, mass murder and mayhem inside the same house.

And that was it. Not a hint as to what might have caused the birth defects that popped up nine months later, and certainly nothing to back up Melanie's 'burst of Otherness' theory.

Jack returned the cartridge to Mrs. Forseman at her desk.

'Should have listened to you,' he said, trying to soften her up. 'Couldn't find a thing.'

It worked. She actually cracked a smile. A tiny one. 'Just trying to save you some trouble.'

'I guess any way you look at it, sixty-eight was a bad year for Monroe.'

'A bad year for the whole country,' she said. 'The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy came in the spring, followed by the riots in Chicago at the Democratic convention. And then the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia and slaughtered people in the streets.' Her eyes got a faraway look. 'Almost as if a dark cloud passed over the world that year and turned everything ugly.'

Jack hunched his shoulders to relieve a crawling sensation along his nape as he remembered Canfield's talk about a 'burst of Otherness.' You could almost make a case for something foul entering the world early in sixty- eight.

He shook it off. 'Any children of the cluster still around?'

'Only two survived,' she said, wary again. 'But don't expect me to tell you who they are. They deserve their privacy.'

'I suppose you're right. I've already spoken to Melanie Rubin and Frayne Canfield and I thought—'

'I saw Melanie recently myself. I hadn't seen her since her mother's funeral, but just last week I passed her old house and saw her standing outside with a very handsome man.'

Jack knew she couldn't be talking about Lew. 'What did he look like?'

She laughed. 'Oh, I doubt very much I could describe him. My attention was too fixed on the monkey on his shoulder.'

'A monkey, ay?' Jack said. Hadn't Roma told Lew yesterday that he'd been looking forward to meeting Melanie in person? 'Isn't that interesting.'

'Yes. Cute as a button.'

Jack shrugged. 'I guess that's it then. Thanks.'

'Let those poor people be, young man,' she said as he headed for the door. 'Just let them be.'

Jack found a pay phone in the library foyer and called Lew's home number.

When Lew recognized Jack's voice he gasped. 'Have you found her?'

'Not yet,' Jack said. 'Any sign of her out there?'

'No,' he said, his tone disconsolate. 'Not a thing.'

'I had a nice little chat with Frayne Canfield.'

'Was he any help?'

'Not much. What's his story?'

'Still lives with his parents. Keeps to himself pretty much except for SESOUP activities. Debugs software for a living, but I don't think he's particularly successful at it. Why? You think he's involved?'

'It's a possibility.' A very good possibility. 'I'm going to be keeping an eye on him. But you didn't tell me he was wheelchair-bound. He described his legs as 'deformed'…which is also how he described Melanie's left arm.' Not quite true, but Jack didn't want to let on that he'd broken into the Monroe house. 'How come you never mentioned Melanie's arm?'

'I didn't think it mattered.'

'It does if it's an identifying characteristic. Can I ask what's wrong with her hand?'

'Well…she doesn't really have one. According to the doctors, all the fingers on her left hand fused into a single large digit while she was a fetus. The same happened with the fingernails, leaving her with one large thick nail. She keeps it bandaged in public because it tends to upset people—they either stare or turn away.'

'I'm sorry,' Jack said, unable to think of anything to say.

Poor Melanie…imagine having to go through life hiding one of your hands all the time…and chopping the hands off your dolls…

'Nothing to be sorry about,' Lew said. 'She leads a full life. People stop noticing the bandage after a while. And.to tell you the truth, it never bothered me. I fell in love with her the moment I laid eyes on her. The only thing it has stopped her from doing is having children. She's too afraid she'll pass on her deformity.'

Jack shook his head, remembering the wistful look in Lew's eyes this morning when he was playing with that toddler in the coffee shop.

'There's always adoption.'

''Someday I hope we will.' His voice teetered on a sob. 'If she ever comes back.'

'We'll find her, Lew,' Jack said, only half believing it himself. 'Just hang in there.'

'Like I have a choice?' he said and hung up.

Don't fall apart on me, Lew, Jack thought as he replaced the receiver. You're the only one I've met in this thing who seems to be dealing from a full deck.

He turned and saw an aerial map of Monroe with the streets labeled. He found Melanie's family home. He remembered the address of the Hanley mansion from the articles and, just for the hell of it, located its approximate location. Not too far from Melanie's place. Jack could see no line of causality between the storms and the deaths at the mansion in March to the birth defects in December, but he was sure some of the SESOUPers back at the convention could find multiple ways to link them. Probably link them to the King and Kennedy assassinations and every other nasty occurrence that year as well.

But there couldn't be a connection. Just coincidence…

Shaking his head, he stepped outside and ambled toward his car. He was in no hurry to get back to the hotel. By now the SESOUP crew would be frothing at their collective mouths with theories about the ritualistic murder of one of their members.

Good a time as any to do some more work on the new Social Security number, and maybe even sneak in a little time to help Vicky with her baseball skills.

14

'They cut out her eyes?' Abe said around a mouthful of frozen mocha yogurt. His expression registered disgust. 'You're making me lose my appetite.'

'Wait,' Jack said. 'That's just the start. I haven't told you what they did to her lips and how they twisted —'

He waved his hand in Jack's face. 'No-no-no! What I don't know can't nauseate me.'

Just as well. Jack didn't want to talk about it anyway. He kept picturing himself finding Melanie in that